The Reliability of Summer

Hydrangea alaskana was found in fossil form in Alaska dating back 23 million years. Those were the days of early horses, the ancestors of distant rhinoceros, and porto-camels the size of a deer.  Dinosaur-like predatory "terror birds" flew the skies and giant penguins lived in temperate zones.  I close my eyes as I stand in my yard and listen to the bluebirds chirping and the hummingbirds humming like little motors around my head.  I imagine the lack of human life back then.   But, what would I would smell and hear?  I long to be transported.  An annoying dog barks his brains out nearby and through the woods, but I pay it no mind.  I imagine myself standing on the coast of Maine watching the dorsal fin of a monster Megalodon, ten times larger than a Great White Shark, with a tooth the size of the palm of my my hand, glide out well beyond the shore.  Fully-jawed open, two of me, standing feet-to-head would span the space from its lower to upper jaw. Once swallowed, I'd swim for days before I knew I had been eaten.  These are the days of the hydrangea's first bloom.  So much history and longevity in this flowering tree that contains cyanide and is easy to grow in my garden.  It blooms later in the summer, now hot August here in Maine.  Every year I snip conical-shaped whitish green stalks of flowers and let them dry in an orange glass vase on my porch.  They will remind me of the reliability of summer once the snow falls in Maine.